What's it called when you see something for the first time, and then you see that same thing or hear that same word something like seven times over the next week? Is there a name for that? That's really strange when that happens, but really when you think about it, that kind of thing is happening every second, we just don't know what the "thing" is that our ephemeral radar signals should be looking for. The point is that this is what happened to me with the band Love of Diagrams, who I had no knowledge of before entering into Slim's to see the estimable Ted Leo do this thing. After watching their sturdy, razor sharp fidgety post-punk, within five days I had seen their name over a dozen times in various publications and permutations of legitimate publications. They are Australian. I could name check some post-punk bands for you right now, but after about four songs by this band, I started thinking, "man, this band is REALLY good." I would say Sleater-Kinney good. That's all about them for now.
As for Ted Leo, if you were going to freeze the screen at one moment during his sweat-drenched performance, it would be about four songs in, while Leo was halfway through "Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone." At this point, his green and white checked Ben Sherman shirt is only partially drenched in sweat, but it's still snugly tucked into his white (presumably Levi Sta-Prest) jeans. On his feat are some sort of black boots, possibly the venerable Doc Martins of long ago. He's attacking at his guitar with a quick back and forth rhythmic pulse like a boxer, and he's sort of rocking side to side in time with the music and I swear to god, both his feet were off the ground for about a fraction of a millisecond. Such is the energy that this man puts into his performance.
His visual queues are mostly taken from skinhead iconography, from his own look (although he's shortly cropped, not shaved and there are no braces to match the boots), and even the badges and scarf (yes, scarf) that you can get with the Ted Leo logo recall the good ol' days when skinheads mainly just listened to old reggae and danced like they were jumping over bushes. But Ted Leo is no single-minded revivalist. It's hard to say what he is exactly. He's a punk-populist, seething with the self-righteous anger of a genuinely concerned citizen who is tired of watching his country bomb, repeat, and bomb again. He is the rock 'n' roll purist, who believes in the power of a single song which can put all of your angst and fear and joy into a few minutes of fist-pumping joy. Actually, he may not actually believe that—but the crowd around him does. As he belts out songs like "Me and Mia" and the new "Sons of Cain" there is an energy that comes from the crowd, and it's not punk fury or skanking soul—it's the sound of people who believe that this guy is the real deal. The first time I saw Ted Leo in Los Angeles, the guy next to me spent most of the show singing the lyrics into a plastic waterbottle and dancing like a more frantic Courtney Cox in the "Dancin' in the Dark" video. There is a mixture of ages in the crowd, a mixture of races—and Mr. Leo is affable and funny between songs but when the song starts, he is all business, rarely with his eyes open and hitting these falsettos and driving his band into furious, soulful blue-eye punk soul workouts. It's Thin Lizzy one minute, Fugazi the next, and the Maytals on speed for a few seconds, but Ted Leo signs, seals and delivers the whole package in way that is all honesty, no artifice and never less than fucking awesome.
Living with the Living is out now